page_title: George Lilanga
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: George Lilanga / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: The Julius Nyerere Cultural Centre, aka Nyumba ya Sanaa ("House of Arts") in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The gate is a work by the famous tanzanian artist George Lilanga.
context_page_description: George Lilanga was a Tanzanian artist. He was of the Makonde people and lived in Dar es Salaam. His work was exhibited in international expositions of African contemporaries including Africa Remix in Düsseldorf, Paris, London and Tokyo. He worked in the Makonde artistic tradition of carving wood and later began painting, he would largely be known for his stylistic figural figures.
context_section_description: The exact place and date of Lilanga's birth are unknown although he said that he was born in 1934 in the village of Kikwetu, Masasi district, in the Mtwara Region of southern Tanzania.
  Lilanga's parents were both Makonde (an ethnic group originating in Mozambique). His father was an agricultural labourer who worked on the sisal plantations and he had two brothers who died before him. His father left the family and married another woman. Lilanga and his family later moved to the city of Lutamba, in southern Tanzania, on the border with Mozambique.
  Here Lilanga went to grammar school for four years. Lilanga, in the works of his last years of life, which were dedicated to village life, returned many times to the representation of the happy moments when grammar and secondary school students received their diplomas.
  In 1970 Lilanga decided to move to Dar es Salaam, where there were greater opportunities for selling sculptures.
  In 1971, Lilanga got his first job, thanks to his uncle, Augustino Malaba, an already well-known sculptor who would be his future collaborator. He worked as a night guard at the House of Art (Nyumba ya Sanaa), a typical African center for the development of art and craftsmanship. Lilanga's talents were soon recognized by Jean Pruitt. Lilanga welcomed to Nyumba ya Sanaa to join other artists like Robino Ntila, Augustino Malaba and Patrick Francis Imanjama. He began to create batiks, works on goatskin and on sheets of iron for the finishing of railings and gates.
  Lilanga frequented the art circles of the Tingatinga school. Around 1972 he became essentially a painter. Some of his works were presented at Dar es Salaam's National Museum in 1974.
  In 1977, he made his first journey outside Africa, travelling to New York, where he had a show at the Marycoll Ossing Center. He stayed for a brief time in Manhattan, selling prints made on paper or cardboard, standing on street corners.
caption: The main gate of the Nyumba ya Sanaa cultural centre in Dar es Salaam has decorations by Lilanga
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image ExifOffset": "50", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "312", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6721", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:10:10 12:37:32", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3872", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "182", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "934a4bfae0b9b3c0fc197c1511f0e209"}